Steve Ballmer Wrote The Windows Blue Screen Of Death Error Message

It was revealed today that Steve Ballmer himself wrote the famous Windows Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) error message.

During this time period, Steve Ballmer was head of the Systems Division, and he paid a visit to the Windows team to see what they were up to, as is the wont of many executives.¹ When they showed him the Ctrl+Alt+Del feature, he nodded thoughtfully and added, “This is nice, but I don’t like the text of the message. It doesn’t sound right to me.”

“Okay, Steve. If you think you can do a better job, then go for it.” Unlike some other executive, Steve took up the challenge, and a few days later, he emailed what he thought the Ctrl+Alt+Del screen should say.

The text he came up with was actually quite good, and it went into the product pretty much word for word.